


Divergence

by feverbeats



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-10
Updated: 2010-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:16:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is no longer a king with a future and a mission and a path; he's just a frightened eighteen-year-old with a child in his arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Divergence

  
The tall grass is sharp against Albus's legs and he clutches the bundle to his chest. He's so good at magic and so good at figuring things out and so, _so_ bad at this.

_Gellert is standing in the garden and asking, "How?"_

Albus doesn't know how, just as he didn't know how nine months ago. He's one of the most brilliant men in the world, but that doesn't matter now. All that matters is the tiny, breathing thing in his arms. Breathing, breathing, it is still breathing, unlike Ariana, and that knowledge is enough to keep his hands from shaking with panic and grief.

Time and space unravel around him, unimportant for once in his tiny life. He is no longer a king with a future and a mission and a path; he's just a frightened eighteen-year-old with a child in his arms. There is nowhere he can go.

_Gellert is pacing the kitchen. His hands are twisted together, fear and determination leaking from behind his quick fingers. "We'll think of something. We will."_

They did. They are the schemers, after all, the ones with all the plans. They cast aside the _how_ and simply stuck to the _what now, oh Merlin, what now?_, getting through on the strength of their egos alone.

_"The rest is easy," Gellert is telling him, hands pressed against the new baby's back. "The rest is so easy."_

It is early March, and the flowers are starting to come back, but there's still frost on the blades of grass that cut Albus's legs like metal blades, and this is not easy.

Albus has never in his life been afraid for himself. In his less selfish moments he was afraid for Ariana (and oh, how right he was too be) and for Aberforth with his bloody knuckles, for his father in Azkaban and his mother with her worry-lined, proud face.

Now, all he has left is his brother's shouts echoing in his ears and his baby in his arms, and he is afraid for himself. If he dies, the child dies.

There has been too much death already.

_Gellert is saying, "I''m sorry about your sister." His feet are bare and he isn't smiling, but he isn't running, either._

Albus never thought Gellert would go so mad, and he doesn't know whether to blame himself or the baby or the town or all of it together. He compiles careful lists in his head of spells that would have saved them when no human words could have.

There is no golden band on Albus's finger, but there is a strip of glittering magic wrapped tightly around his heart, strangling and constricting. The memory of the bonding spell echoes in his head over the sound of the wind.

_"Go," Aberforth is yelling over and over. "Go, take her, I'll hold him off!"_

"Ariana," Albus whispers to the baby. "Ariana Kendra Dumbledore."

She is silent, but she blinks up at him a few times. Her eyes are the blue of any baby's and he hopes with all his heart that they will remain that way.

Glancing behind him into Godric's Hollow, Albus can still hear distant shouts. He pretends he doesn't know whose they are, who is screaming and cursing and perhaps dying for him.

Abruptly, the sounds end, and Albus crouches down in the grass quickly, his body shielding the baby. Every instinct says _go back, fight, draw blood_, but he knows he can't. He'll have to change the kind of person he is now, under the skin as well as on the surface.

He turns away, carrying the baby toward nothing.

_Gellert is standing the garden and saying nothing at all._


End file.
